You shouldn't even have to reach the "slavery" element, since that just opens the door to the argument that there was more to southern culture than slavery, which is of course true. The fact that it is the flag of a treasonous, secessionist armed insurrection should be enough to condemn it.

the_rev:This is what everyone's all butthurt about? Tapdancing Christ on a cracker...people will go to such great pains to find something to be offended about.

I'm not offended by it at all. I never have been. It just brands the person displaying it as a complete f*cking moron who isn't to be taken seriously. It's sort of like a bolo tie in that sense. If anything, it's a good thing. It's a great asshole detection system.

It's like no one has ever heard Carlin's rant on symbols. You can make a symbol mean anything you want it to mean. Great example: Most people see the Iwo Jima Monument and think of World War II and soldiers. Some think of all the parodies of it. Me? I think of what my girlfriend and I were doing under a blanket on a high school tour bus at the time we drove by it, and how it's still a joke between us. Another example: Some see a Yankees hat and think awesome team. Southerners (and Sox fans, for that matter, for different reasons) see it and think of pushy, self-righteous assholes.

If they want to think of the positive aspects of the flag, I say let 'em. And to those of you who are spouting the "armed insurrection" BS, please read a Constitution and realize what they did was perfectly legal at the time, and is technically still entirely so.

Hey, the Nazi flag is just celebrating your German heritage. You know, not all of it, just those years they were killing millions of innocent people.

Much like the Confederate battle flag is only from that specific time period when those states were committing treason against the United States, fighting and killing thousands upon thousands of American citizens all to keep slavery to hold onto their economic status quo.

I might buy it more if it had been a symbol of the South from it's very early days and then just adopted as the flag of a secessionist rebel regime.

Good. You shouldn't be. Nobody should. It's an inch-wide earplug in a douchy millionaire singer's ear. But yet, we are reading about people tweeting and complaining, and the guy having to make apologies for it, blah blah. The United States of the Offended.

the_rev:sigdiamond2000: I'm not offended by it at all. I never have been.

Good. You shouldn't be. Nobody should. It's an inch-wide earplug in a douchy millionaire singer's ear. But yet, we are reading about people tweeting and complaining, and the guy having to make apologies for it, blah blah. The United States of the Offended.

I'm offended by shiatty country music. The confederate flag is a symbol of that same shiatty confederate music; therefore, I'm offended by the confederate flag.

the_rev:Good. You shouldn't be. Nobody should. It's an inch-wide earplug in a douchy millionaire singer's ear. But yet, we are reading about people tweeting and complaining, and the guy having to make apologies for it, blah blah. The United States of the Offended.

This. People make their entire livings off of being offended in this country.

FriarReb98:the_rev: Good. You shouldn't be. Nobody should. It's an inch-wide earplug in a douchy millionaire singer's ear. But yet, we are reading about people tweeting and complaining, and the guy having to make apologies for it, blah blah. The United States of the Offended.

This. People make their entire livings off of being offended in this country.

I prefer to refer to it as "Southern Pop." It belongs with classic country as much as a whale belongs in the middle of Kansas, with Taylor Swift being the (admittedly hot) poster child for why my title is apt.

sweetmelissa31:FriarReb98: I'm sure the millions of Hindus, Buddhists and Janists who still use swastikas in their religion share your view.

Are you the kind of guy who has a Nazi flag tattoo and claim you just intended it as a Buddhist symbol?

Nope, I'm the kind of guy who watched way too much Carlin and had way too many history classes to think that a symbol or word will mean the same thing every time forever and ever. Read my previous posts too.

It wasn't until the 90s that Confederate flags started being strongly equated with Slavery and Racism, and an awful lot of folks still think that Confederate flags still mean "I'm a Rebel! Rebels are Cool!"

I think those people (what do you mean, those people?) still wear/ use the symbol to "stick it to the libs!"

To educated folks it's a symbol of oppression, to uneducated folks it's a symbol of cool. Screaming at the uneducated that their cool symbol is a hate symbol isn't the way to educate them.

(lived in the North most of my life, in Austin the last two decades, and I haven't owned anything with a Confederate flag on it since being a teenager. Comment added before some dumbass accuses me of "defending the Confederate flag")

And for the record, anyone who is offended by a Confederate Battle Flag but not the Georgia state flag needs a history book on why the state essentially pegged a giant middle finger in the face of the offended and got away with it.

I read them, and I think you're just being politically correct. It's currently out of fashion to admit being racist, so you claim you're not so people won't be angry at you. 50 or 60 years ago you could proudly call yourself a racist, but now you're just afraid.

FriarReb98:And for the record, anyone who is offended by a Confederate Battle Flag but not the Georgia state flag needs a history book on why the state essentially pegged a giant middle finger in the face of the offended and got away with it.

For the record, I'm not offended by it. There's very little in life that offends me. There's a difference between being offended and just thinking something is stupid and hypocritical.

I prefer to refer to it as "Southern Pop." It belongs with classic country as much as a whale belongs in the middle of Kansas, with Taylor Swift being the (admittedly hot) poster child for why my title is apt.

Agreed.

Popular Country Music is what we should all be offended by. It's not country, it's pop with violins (fiddle is too country a word to use anymore). It's made by frustrated wannabe popstars, and marketed toward minivan driving soccer moms.

But it is NOT COUNTRY.9

Now, real country music still lives on... they call it Alt Country (among other labels) now. You can find it with some digging... satellite radio, the internet, but you'll never hear real country on TV or FM radio ever again, because it's not as marketable as blonde barbie pop star wannabe shaking her ass and singing her latest girl power anthem.

I prefer to refer to it as "Southern Pop." It belongs with classic country as much as a whale belongs in the middle of Kansas, with Taylor Swift being the (admittedly hot) poster child for why my title is apt.

Agreed.

Popular Country Music is what we should all be offended by. It's not country, it's pop with violins (fiddle is too country a word to use anymore). It's made by frustrated wannabe popstars, and marketed toward minivan driving soccer moms.

But it is NOT COUNTRY.9

Now, real country music still lives on... they call it Alt Country (among other labels) now. You can find it with some digging... satellite radio, the internet, but you'll never hear real country on TV or FM radio ever again, because it's not as marketable as blonde barbie pop star wannabe shaking her ass and singing her latest girl power anthem.

I never thought it would be possible for somebody to be a country music hipster./I keed.